"When you back up and look at Apple's effect on job creation in the United States, we estimate that we've created more than 600,000 jobs now," said Cook. Those jobs, not all Apple hires, vary from research and development jobs in California to retail store hires to third-party app developers. Apple already has data centers in North Carolina, Nevada and Oregon and plans to build a new one in Texas.

Some of this is surely practical, but it's also good PR. One of the last hardware products manufactured in USA was Apple's high-end PowerMacs. That work was moved to China in the late 90's as a way to be more competitive with other computer makers. Apple began stamping its products with the icon Designed in California designation.

With the latest generation iMac at least some that started shipping last week indicate they were assembled in the USA.